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Constance Vera “Sally Gray” <I>Stevens</I> Browne

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Constance Vera “Sally Gray” Stevens Browne

Birth
Holloway, London Borough of Islington, Greater London, England
Death
24 Sep 2006 (aged 91)
Greater London, England
Burial
Mereworth, Tonbridge and Malling Borough, Kent, England Add to Map
Memorial ID
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THE SUNDAY SUN & GUARDIAN, June 7, 1953
AN ACTRESS INSURED AGAINST LOVE
A lush, blonde London actress romped into the Coronation ceremony this week on the name of a handsome baron. She is Sally Gray, 37, who startled Britain's peeresses on Monday by announcing that she is now the Baroness Oranmore-Browne. Next day she sat with the ranking peers' wives in Westminster Abbey during the great ceremony. The family motto of Dominick Browne is Bold and Faithful. Bold he has proved himself - as a second lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, who sighed with relief when his Irish high spirits were withdrawn from the regiment, and in the fact that he has now ventured into matrimony three times. The faithful part of the motto has to be read in juxtaposition with the fact that his first two wives divorced him on the grounds of adultery.
CINDERELLA GIRL
Oranmore and Browne is an 1836 Irish title which acquired English status in 1926 when the United Kingdom barony of Mereworth (pronounced: merry-worth) was added to it. The bold baron's latest Sally is a saucer-eyed beauty who once said she had insured herself at Lloyds' for £36,000 against falling in love. When her father died she was only six. Her mother was a ballet dancer at London's Drury Lane theatre. "Mother danced like a slave to keep me and my three sisters," the new Lady Oranmore and Browne says. "I was a sort of Cinderella." Fred Astaire helped make Sally a dancer. At 19, she left her £5 a-week chorus job to co-star with topliner Stanley Lupino in 'Cheer Up' - a film about her own life. She got £62 a week for that.
TRIED CORONET
Lupino's will revealed 12 years later that Sally also got £12,500 on an insurance policy he had taken out. By 1936 she was getting £250 a week from the 'Over She Goes' revue in London's West End. That was the year the Baron Oranmore and Browne's first wife divorced him. Sally Gray next acted in films called 'Dangerous Moonlight Obsession' and 'Green for Danger.' She met the tall, rich baron in 1951. She was cited when his second wife divorced him on the grounds of adultery in a flat in Mount St., Mayfair. In the flat, 5B Mount St., last Monday, Sally rushed through the last fittings for her expensive white-beaded Coronation gown and her baronial diamond-studded coronet. "Can't tell you when or where we were married, but you can say it was recently," she told an interviewer.
THREE CASTLES
Somebody asked her whether she had married just now to get into the abbey for the Coronation. Miss Gray paused and said coldly, "I think you would be mistaken to assume that." Whenever she married Oranmore and Browne - he would not tell either - Sally acquired a wife's interest in 8000 rich acres in Eire, Scotland and England and three baronial castles (in County Mayo, County Galway and Maidstone, Kent). The baron had two sons and three daughters by his first wife, two sons by the second. His alimony payments are no great worry because under English law they are deducted from his gross income before income tax is assessed.

BIOGRAPHY: IDMb
Lovely, statuesque actress Sally Gray, complete with husky voice and dumb blonde persona was born Constance Vera Stevens in London, England on February 14, 1915. In a career instigated by her ballerina mother, Sally began performing at age 10 in minstrel shows and was initially trained in dance and acting at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art. She later gained experience as a chorine in London-based musical shows before making her film debut in an adaptation of Richard B. Sheridan's classic restoration comedy School for Scandal (1930). Throughout the late 1930s the shapely, vivacious actress appeared in such films as Loves of a Dictator (1935), Checkmate (1935), Danger in Paris (1937), and The Saint in London (1939). She was also utilized by actor/director Stanley Lupino in such light "B"-level entertainment as Cheer Up (1936), Hold My Hand (1938) and Over She Goes (1937).

Following the filming of The Saint's Vacation (1941) and Suicide Squadron (1941), Sally suffered a major nervous breakdown and was off the screen for five years. She bounced back in the post-war years with "bad girl" roles in heavier dramas such as Green for Danger (1946), I Became a Criminal (1947) and The Mark of Cain (1947), the last film playing a wife who comes between her husband and his brother.

Hollywood expressed interest in the voluptuous blonde after her work in The Hidden Room (1949), but she turned down the offer when she married Dominick Geoffrey Edward Browne who, as the fourth Lord Oranmore and Browne, made her his third wife in 1951. Her last film was I'll Get You (1952). Sally settled into her new life as Lady Oranmore and Browne in County Mayo, Ireland, but returned to live in London in the early 1960s. Never reactivating her career, she tended assiduously to her gardening in later years. Her husband of 52 years, who served as a member of the House of Lords for 72 years, died in 2002 at the age of 100, and Sally followed him to the grave four years later at age 91 on September 24, 2006, in London.
THE SUNDAY SUN & GUARDIAN, June 7, 1953
AN ACTRESS INSURED AGAINST LOVE
A lush, blonde London actress romped into the Coronation ceremony this week on the name of a handsome baron. She is Sally Gray, 37, who startled Britain's peeresses on Monday by announcing that she is now the Baroness Oranmore-Browne. Next day she sat with the ranking peers' wives in Westminster Abbey during the great ceremony. The family motto of Dominick Browne is Bold and Faithful. Bold he has proved himself - as a second lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, who sighed with relief when his Irish high spirits were withdrawn from the regiment, and in the fact that he has now ventured into matrimony three times. The faithful part of the motto has to be read in juxtaposition with the fact that his first two wives divorced him on the grounds of adultery.
CINDERELLA GIRL
Oranmore and Browne is an 1836 Irish title which acquired English status in 1926 when the United Kingdom barony of Mereworth (pronounced: merry-worth) was added to it. The bold baron's latest Sally is a saucer-eyed beauty who once said she had insured herself at Lloyds' for £36,000 against falling in love. When her father died she was only six. Her mother was a ballet dancer at London's Drury Lane theatre. "Mother danced like a slave to keep me and my three sisters," the new Lady Oranmore and Browne says. "I was a sort of Cinderella." Fred Astaire helped make Sally a dancer. At 19, she left her £5 a-week chorus job to co-star with topliner Stanley Lupino in 'Cheer Up' - a film about her own life. She got £62 a week for that.
TRIED CORONET
Lupino's will revealed 12 years later that Sally also got £12,500 on an insurance policy he had taken out. By 1936 she was getting £250 a week from the 'Over She Goes' revue in London's West End. That was the year the Baron Oranmore and Browne's first wife divorced him. Sally Gray next acted in films called 'Dangerous Moonlight Obsession' and 'Green for Danger.' She met the tall, rich baron in 1951. She was cited when his second wife divorced him on the grounds of adultery in a flat in Mount St., Mayfair. In the flat, 5B Mount St., last Monday, Sally rushed through the last fittings for her expensive white-beaded Coronation gown and her baronial diamond-studded coronet. "Can't tell you when or where we were married, but you can say it was recently," she told an interviewer.
THREE CASTLES
Somebody asked her whether she had married just now to get into the abbey for the Coronation. Miss Gray paused and said coldly, "I think you would be mistaken to assume that." Whenever she married Oranmore and Browne - he would not tell either - Sally acquired a wife's interest in 8000 rich acres in Eire, Scotland and England and three baronial castles (in County Mayo, County Galway and Maidstone, Kent). The baron had two sons and three daughters by his first wife, two sons by the second. His alimony payments are no great worry because under English law they are deducted from his gross income before income tax is assessed.

BIOGRAPHY: IDMb
Lovely, statuesque actress Sally Gray, complete with husky voice and dumb blonde persona was born Constance Vera Stevens in London, England on February 14, 1915. In a career instigated by her ballerina mother, Sally began performing at age 10 in minstrel shows and was initially trained in dance and acting at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art. She later gained experience as a chorine in London-based musical shows before making her film debut in an adaptation of Richard B. Sheridan's classic restoration comedy School for Scandal (1930). Throughout the late 1930s the shapely, vivacious actress appeared in such films as Loves of a Dictator (1935), Checkmate (1935), Danger in Paris (1937), and The Saint in London (1939). She was also utilized by actor/director Stanley Lupino in such light "B"-level entertainment as Cheer Up (1936), Hold My Hand (1938) and Over She Goes (1937).

Following the filming of The Saint's Vacation (1941) and Suicide Squadron (1941), Sally suffered a major nervous breakdown and was off the screen for five years. She bounced back in the post-war years with "bad girl" roles in heavier dramas such as Green for Danger (1946), I Became a Criminal (1947) and The Mark of Cain (1947), the last film playing a wife who comes between her husband and his brother.

Hollywood expressed interest in the voluptuous blonde after her work in The Hidden Room (1949), but she turned down the offer when she married Dominick Geoffrey Edward Browne who, as the fourth Lord Oranmore and Browne, made her his third wife in 1951. Her last film was I'll Get You (1952). Sally settled into her new life as Lady Oranmore and Browne in County Mayo, Ireland, but returned to live in London in the early 1960s. Never reactivating her career, she tended assiduously to her gardening in later years. Her husband of 52 years, who served as a member of the House of Lords for 72 years, died in 2002 at the age of 100, and Sally followed him to the grave four years later at age 91 on September 24, 2006, in London.

Inscription

DOMINICK GEOFFREY EDWARD BROWNE
4th Baron Oranmore and Browne
2nd Baron Mereworth
1901 - 2002
and his wife
CONSTANCE VERA STEVENS
The actress Sally Gray
1915 - 2006



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  • Created by: DJHSTL
  • Added: Apr 29, 2021
  • Find a Grave Memorial ID:
  • Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/226234328/constance_vera-browne: accessed ), memorial page for Constance Vera “Sally Gray” Stevens Browne (14 Feb 1915–24 Sep 2006), Find a Grave Memorial ID 226234328, citing St Lawrence Churchyard, Mereworth, Tonbridge and Malling Borough, Kent, England; Maintained by DJHSTL (contributor 49167816).